RoboBricks Project Status

This is the most common state for one of
my projects. It means that project has
been started, but not finished. Furthermore,
it means that I still have intentions of
continuing to work on it in the future.
It does not mean that I am actively working
on the project now. It may be
years before I get back to working on the
project.

An abandoned project is one that I have
decided not to ever work on in the future.
One common way that a project gets abondoned
is that somebody decides to manufacture the
project as a product for sale in the
marketplace and I simply purchase the product.
Another way that a project gets abandoned
is because viable alternatives become available.
The third way a project becomes abandoned is
that I lose interest and decide that I have
no intention of working on the project any
further.

This almost never happens. When it does, it
basically means that I think the project is
complete and needs no further work on my part.

The next question is `Why do I expose all of these
incomplete projects to the Web?' The answer to this
question has to do with search engines and electronic
communities. With the advent of freely available
search engines, it becomes possible for people who
have common interests to find one another. If you
are lucky, there is a good chance that the area you
are interested in has a network news group. For
interest areas not covered by a network news group,
you can go to a search engine and hopefully find
some people who have published material on the
subject and start interacting with the publisher
via E-mail.

This is all nice in theory, but does it happen in
practice? The answer is `yes!' many times over.
For example, some people have stumbled across some
of my very incomplete work on rocketry and we have
started to collaborate as a result. Similarly,
my incomplete work on stepper motors has generated
a number of E-mails. Also, somebody ran across
my train pages and we've been collaborating in
that area as well.

Anyhow, the bottom line for me is that I have no
problems with letting you look at my projects as
they slowly progress and some people have derived
a benefit from seeing them. As long as people can
easily figure out which ones are "work in progress",
there should be no real harm done.